Tag Archives: Grimm Bros.

Tempest recently chalked up its ninth month of craft beer writing. To celebrate the occasion, I’ve been posting an annotated index of articles that I’ve written to date. The first segment listed my articles on beer and culture, followed by my regional spotlights. This segment includes a list of my brewery profiles and beer reviews, along with a few recipes for those interested in cooking and food/beverage pairings.

Thanks again for the support over the past several months. Enjoy!

I. Brewery Profiles

So far, my brewery profiles cover an uneven patchwork of the United States, but I’m working on shading in the map of the U.S., and will make the occasional foray into Canada as well.

Tom Horst, a former Amarillo Symphony Orchestra percussionist and still-part-time music teacher at Boulder High School, brewed out of his garage until opening his production facility and taproom in the autumn of 2013.

If you’ve been wanting to try some of those neglected German historical styles that have been enjoying a resurgence in popularity of late, Grimm Bros. has you covered. Broyhahn, Kottbusser or Lichtenhainer, anyone?

Randy Lacey was one of the driving forces behind the Farm Brewery Legislation (2013), which has been a boon for brewers in New York State. When he’s not advocating on behalf of the region’s brewers, Lacey brews up beers that feature, among other things, local honey and local ginger.

Oklahoma

Roughtail (Oklahoma City)––Roughtail Enters the Ring with a Selection of Heavy-Weight Beers

Along with breweries such as Coop Aleworks and Prairie Artisan Ales, Roughtail has been working hard to put Oklahoma on the craft beer map. Their motto: “Aggressive. Flavor Forward.” If you’re someone who raises your eyes reverently skyward when the conversation turns to IBUs and the ineffable beauty of hops, Tony Tielli’s beers are well worth your attention.

Sessionable beers reign supreme here. And why not? Four Corners’ beers are a fine antidote to the summer time heat. The visual iconography (labels, tap handles, and the like) pays tribute to the long-established Hispanic community in which the brewery finds itself.

Brewing’s in Dennis Wehrmann’s DNA. His family has been brewing for generations in and near Nuremberg. Six years back, Wehrmann began brewing a taste of his native Franconia in a town north of Dallas, where beers are crafted according to the German Purity Laws (Reinheitsgebot).

Style parameters and a discussion of the ingredients you’ll need to whip up a batch of German-style Weissbier in your kitchen. Companion piece to Hefeweizen: A Beer for All Seasons, an article that contains tasting notes for several commercially available wheat beers.

Friends often ask me to recommend books on beer. I wrote this piece for the holiday season, but it’s worth a read if you’re looking for books that deal with different facets of craft beer appreciation. The article contains short write-ups of the following books:

On a continent awash with American renditions of India Pale Ale, it’s a rare and pleasant surprise to come across a North American brewery that does not have an IPA of some sort on its menu. Grimm Brothers Brewhouse, just a stone’s throw away from Fort Collins in Loveland, Colorado, continues this week’s Tempest in a Tankard German theme, venturing where few North American breweries have tread. With a bold all-Germanic line-up of beers that eschews the standard-issue IPAs, pale ales, and hopped-up ambers, even Grimms’ porter lays claim to German heritage.

The folks at Grimm Brothers not only brew up a wonderful array of medal-winning German standards such as their Fearless Youth Dunkel Lager, which brought home a bronze in the European-style Dunkel category at this year’s Great American Beer Festival, and Little Red Cap Altbier, which took bronze in the German-style Altbier category at last year’s GABF. The brewery also has a penchant for resurrecting long-forgotten German beer styles, featuring an eastern German Kottbusser-style ale (Snowdrop, available year-round) and a seasonal Lichtenhainer-style ale (Gustavus, a kind of Berliner Rauchbier), along with its soon-to-be-released Broyhahn Bier called Pack of Scoundrels, a spicy stab at historical interpretation that traces its roots to Hannover. (If you’re in the Fort Collins area on November 16, you won’t want to miss this release.)

And though I can’t vouch for the authenticity of a brettanomyces-laced harvest bock – craft brewers in the U.S. have, after all, embraced the sour beer and wood-aged beer phenomenon with aplomb – Grimm also pours a seasonal Willow Wren Erntebier Brett Bock. Now drink three of those and say that four times.

When I visited co-owner and vice-president, Aaron Heaton, at the Grimm Brothers’ coolly minimalist tasting room back in October, one of my first questions concerned the connection with the Brothers Grimm.

As the story goes, Amelia Chapman, wife of Grimm Brothers co-owner, Don Chapman, is a teacher, and much enamoured of the Grimms’ fairy tales. Heaton and Chapman were initially skeptical of the Grimm idea, but with over two-hundred-and-fifty fairy tales to inspire their grain- and hop-inspired poetic fancy, they decided to run with the idea. With the help of graphic designer, Josh Emrich, the beers found their visual muse. (A standout among Emrich’s labels is his witty citation of Jacques-Louis David’s famous painting, Napoleon Crossing the Alps, for the Master Thief German Porter. In the spirit of good fun, I’d be inclined, though, to challenge Emrich to produce a more historically accurate, albeit fictitious, painting entitled Disraeli Crossing the Channel.)

Heaton, an erstwhile accountant, and Chapman, an engineer in his former incarnation, were both one-time members of Fort Collins’ Liquid Poets homebrew club, a storied community of homebrewers that has spawned the likes of Funkwerks, Equinox, and Pateros Creek. Shortly after opening their doors in July 2010, the pair became three after joining forces with Russell Fruits, who handles sales and marketing. Though they still brew on the same ten-barrel system that got them off the ground, the trio has been so successful that they have increased their fermentation capacity, added 22-ounce bottlings, and expanded to a nearby unit to house their tasting room.

Alas, for the time being, Grimms’ excellent beers are available in Colorado only. Future plans include distribution to other states, but in the meantime, you’ll need to make sure friends traveling to Colorado bring you back a few treats. If on a winter’s night in Denver, you might also stop by Colorado Liquor Mart, which carries a selection of Grimm bottlings.

Further Reading:

Last year marked the two-hundredth anniversary of the publication of the Grimms’ fairy tale collection, Kinder- und Hausmärchen. You’ll find plenty of literature that will introduce you to the Grimm brothers and their cultural significance, including Maria Tatar’s bicentennial annotated edition of the Grimms’ tales. (For an interview with Tatar on Tom Ashbrook’s NPR radio show, “On Point,” click here.) Another German literature scholar, Jack Zipes, has published a number of works on German fairy tales and the Grimms, including The Brothers Grimm: From the Enchanted Forest to the Modern World (1988), and, more recently, The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of a Genre (2012).